Hierarchical Oppression versus Horizontal Oppression.

In Liberty or Equality Kuehnelt-Leddihn makes an interesting observation which I think is of sweeping importance in political theory. On page 156 he states

“Since monarchy is “rule from above” and thus does not have to exercise a horizontal pressure , it is by its nature more liberal than democracy. Just because monarchs cannot constantly refer to mandates received from the people, their radius of actions is psychologically more limited than that of democratic leaders”

What could he mean by horizontal pressure? Well I think that is clear. The court of public opinion and creating the status quo to which all must adhere is part and parcel of the democratic governance system. It is also the blind spot from which the immense power of the democractic system is worked from.

A hierarchical system is very easy to criticize given that the leader is observable. “Person X is oppressing us by telling us not to do X, Y and Z and then enacting laws and using force to ensure compliance” – what a monster. This petty little story is ingrained in the Whig tradition and is almost the raison d’etre of the progressive with his incessant whine. But of course, oppression, or rather coercion is vital to civilization and without it you would have anarchy, violence and general non-civilization. As a result, in replacement of hierarchical coercion, the democratic process has horizontal coercion. If you are really lucky, you get to have both completely insane hierarchical coercion and insane horizontal coercion at the same time, which only a democratic system can deliver.

That the main avenue of coercion in the democratic system is horizontal is demonstrated by the presence of education and media in the Cathedral structure. Horizontal coercion also explains the manner in which democracies engage in behavior which at first seems lacking in connection such as extolling youth over age and wisdom, valuing the general will and placing education as the pinnacle of existence. The entirety of the horizontal coercion machine relies on a careful and continual molding of opinion through education, media and horizontal societal policing via the creation and propagation of norms and the continual rebirth of the people with each generation so that they adhere to that damn status quo which mysteriously keeps getting more and more left wing. It is no coincidence that De Tocqueville noted that in the US democracy

“When many organs of the press adopt the same line of conduct, their influence in the long run becomes irresistible, and public opinion, perpetually assailed from the same side, eventually yields to the attack. In the United States each separate journal exercises but little authority; but the power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.2 THE OPINIONS established in the United States under the influence of the liberty of the press are frequently more firmly rooted than those which are formed elsewhere under the sanction of a censor”

So, horizontal oppression/ coercion is the modus operandi of the democracy (with frequent bursts of insane hierarchical oppression/ coercion.) Hierarchical oppression/ coercion is the method of sane governance.

by Admin Posted on August 23, 2015
Posted in Democracy | 4 Comments

The Topology of Power

A reoccurring shape that seems to reoccur in all human populations appears to be that of the disbursement of power centers between a single high authority and numerous sub central power centers. This may at first blush appear to be so obvious as to be unworthy of comment, but the observation of De Jouvenel of the manner in which the single high authority acts in accordance with their position within this topology of power is of exceptional profundity.

To elaborate, I have made a number of diagram which hopefully prove the old adage that a “picture is worth a thousand words.”

The first such diagram is a very simple demonstration of the power structure within a feudal regime. The monarch has limited power as he must approach the Lords and Barons to utilize the manpower and resources. The monarch is constrained by this presence of an intermediary between him and the states’s power.

Fuedal Monarchy

The monarch, being a central power system is teleologically guided to increase their power as is the nature of power. As such, the history of European feudal regimes is marked by the decrease in stature and importance of the lords and barons, a gradual process which De Jouvenel demonstrates in admirable detail. In conjunction with this development has been the increase of a moneyed middle class that has arisen as the result of capitalistic tendencies in European populations. This process was typical of one which occurs in complex systems in that it was gradual, and then sudden. The French revolution marked the epoch of the era of democracy as a result of the monarchy no longer being able to control the forces of equality which it had been fostering as a means to undermine the nobles and lords which stood in the way of it and greater power and the resources of the nation. The revolution swept away the old order, but the new order was left with the mechanisms of power which the monarchy had gradually gained for itself. Having now all the gains of the central power, but now without any organised resistance to further growth, the democratic regime was and is still able to extract further and further resources from the state in the form of conscription, taxation, inflation and other various forms of action which both punish any non-central power centers and rewards and increases the power of the central power system.

Advanced MonarchyThis explains the manner in which we have come to the present predicament of democratic polities dominating given their massive access to power through leftism and why the phenomena of left and right reappears through history.

Of course, this is a general simplification of the system of high-low versus the middle, especially if we turn our attention to the current developments of this crushing machine. The following diagram demonstrates the manner in which all of the various para-governmental organisations in the form of NGOs, major corporations and pressure groups operate by acting for the interests of whichever minority is deemed oppressed by hierarchy, which in essence translates to a cynical high-low tag team which Moldbug refers to as the governing underclass.

Cathedral High Low 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The underclass is of no threat to the governance structure, and in effect benefits them greatly. The current allowance of vast sub-saharan African populations into Europe must be seen in this light, with the thinking of cathedral elites best demonstrated by the quite clear statements from Peter Sutherland, who has declared, and which can safely be taken as representative of the elite, that the homogeneity of nations should be broken with immigration. Make no mistake, this is an organised assault on the populations of Europe, and these migrants will be used as an attack weapon (as they have since the 1950’s.) The recent electoral pressure created by such parties as UKIP and FN made such a move by the elite inevitable, as they will seek to maintain the legitimacy of their governance by statistical head count.

by Admin Posted on August 23, 2015
Posted in AntiCathedralism, Complex Adaptive Systems, De Jouvenel, Democracy, racism | 4 Comments

Three Speeches by Henry Wallace, Part Three

Part one

Part two

The Genetic Basis of Democracy

Henry A. Wallace

A speech delivered on February 12, 1939.
From Henry A. Wallace, Democracy Reborn (New York, 1944), edited by Russell Lord, p. 152.

 I want to pay tribute to Dr. Franz Boas. As chairman of the Lincoln’s Birthday Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom his leadership has done much to marshal the moral forces of science and to bring us together for this Lincoln’s Birthday meeting of scientists in New York City today.

 The cause of liberty and the cause of true science must always be one and the same. For science cannot flourish except in an atmosphere of freedom, and freedom cannot survive unless there is an honest facing of facts. The immediate reason for this meeting is the profound shock you have had, and the deep feeling of protest that stirs in you, as you think of the treatment some of your fellow scientists are receiving in other countries. Men who have made great contributions to human knowledge and culture have been deprived of their positions and their homes, put into concentration camps, driven out of their native lands. Their lifework has been reviled.

 In those same countries, other men, who call themselves scientists, have been willing to play the game of the dictators by twisting science into a mumbo-jumbo of dangerous nonsense. These men are furnishing pseudo-scientific support for the exaltation of one race and one nation as conquerors. (1)

These things run counter to your whole tradition as scientists. You are not only amazed and shocked and moved to protest against the fate of your fellow scientists abroad. You shudder with the realization that these things have happened in scientifically advanced countries in the modern world—and that they might happen here. (ed note – too late.)

Claims to racial superiority are not new in the world. Even in such a democratic country as ours, there are some who would claim that the American people are superior to all others. But never before in the world’s history has such a conscious and systematic effort been made to inculcate the youth of a nation with ideas of racial superiority as are being made in Germany today.

Just what are these ideas? Let me quote from a translation of the Official Handbook for the Schooling of the Hitler Youth, the organization which includes some seventy percent of all the boys and girls in Germany of eligible age.

The handbook discusses the various races found in Germany and other parts of Europe. Concerning what it calls the Nordic race, it says: “Now what distinguishes the Nordic race from all others? It is uncommonly gifted mentally. It is outstanding for truth and energy. Nordic men far the most part possess, even in regard to themselves, a great power of judgment. They incline to be taciturn and cautious. They feel instantly that too loud talking is undignified. They are persistent and stick to a purpose when once they have set themselves to it. Their energy is displayed not only in warfare but also in technology and in scientific research. They are predisposed to leadership by nature.”

But here is what the handbook says concerning what it calls the “Western race,” found principally in England and France: “Compared to the Nordic race there are great differences in soul-qualities. The men of the Western race are . . . loquacious. In comparison with the Nordic . . . men they have much less patience. They act more by feeling than by reason …. They are excitable, even passionate: The Western race with all its mental excitability lacks creative power. This race has produced only a few outstanding men.”

Thus the dictatorial regime in Germany, masquerading its propaganda in pseudo-scientific terms, is teaching the German boys and girls to believe that their race and their nation are superior to all others, and by implication that that nation and that race have a right to dominate all others.

That is the claim. What ground does it have in scientific fact?

We must remember that down through the ages one of the most popular political devices has been to blame economic and other troubles on some minority group. But no one can claim with scientific certainty superiority for any race or nation so far as its inborn genetic characteristics are concerned. Indeed, no nation in Europe is a greater mixture of tribes and breeds than the Germans. This is of course nothing against them, but it makes absurd the claims of superior stock. The word Aryan as used by scientists and not by dictators means the people of the Caucasian race who speak one or another of the Indo-European languages. (Anyone can look it up in his dictionary.) Jews are of course Aryans, so are Hindus, so are Germans and French and English and most Americans. The dictators’ misuse of the word Aryan is pure scientific faking.

Two thousand years ago there was nothing about the ancestors of the modern English or Germans to indicate either scientific, artistic, inventive or philosophic ability. Neither their traditions nor their economic opportunities permitted development along these lines. No scientist can say today with any certainty that many of the so-called backward races and nations do not have inborn genetic capacity which might flower unusually in the sciences, the arts or philosophy, provided only economic conditions and social institutions permitted. (2)

When I was a small boy, George Carver, a Negro who is now a chemist at Tuskegee Institute, was a good friend of my father’s at the Iowa State College. Carver at that time was specializing in botany, and he would take me along on some of his botanizing trips. It was he who first introduced me to the mysteries of botany and plant fertilization. Later on I was to have an intimate acquaintance with plants myself, because I spent a good many years breeding corn. Perhaps that was partly because this scientist, who belonged to another race, had deepened my appreciation of plants in a way I could never forget.

Carver was born in slavery, and to this day he does not definitely know his own age. In his work as a chemist in the South, he correctly sensed the coming interest in the industrial use of the products of the farm—a field of research which our government is now pushing. I mention Carver simply because he is one example of a truth of which we who meet here today are deeply convinced. Superior ability is not the exclusive possession of any one race or any one class. It may arise anywhere, provided men are given the right opportunities.

It is the fashion in certain quarters to sneer at those so-called “poor whites,” who suffer from poor education and had diet, and who live in tumble-down cabins without mattresses. And yet I wonder if any scientist would care to claim that 100,000 children taken at birth from these families would rank any lower in inborn ability than 100,000 children taken at birth from the wealthiest one percent of the parents of the United States. If both groups were given the same food, housing, education and cultural traditions, would they not turn out to have about equal mental and moral traits on the average? If 100,000 German babies were raised under the same conditions as 100,000 Hindu babies or 100,000 Jewish babies, would there be any particular difference? No such experiments have been made or are likely to be made and so no absolutely scientific answer can be given.(3) But when I raise such a question, I mean to imply that every race, every nation, and people from every economic group of society are a great genetic mixture. There is far greater variability among the heredity of individuals within the groups than among the groups.(4) There may be a certain amount of stability of type with regard to skin and eyes and hair, but with regard to mental and emotional characteristics there is very little evidence of genetic uniformity far any race or nation. There may be a great deal of uniformity with respect to traditions but not with respect to complex hereditary characters.

In all of this I do not mean to say that heredity does not work with human beings just as truly as it does with plants and animals. Nor do I mean to deny that a master breeder living for a thousand years might do extraordinary things in the way of fixing human types of unusual longevity, resistance to disease, musical ability or any one of a number of characteristics. A master breeder who had a dictator’s control for several generations might be able to fix a standard blue-eyed, longheaded, fair-haired type of the most approved Nordic specifications. But from our studies in livestock breeding we know that the more complex characteristics are usually altogether separate from such superficial characteristics as skin, hair, or eye color. The color of a cow’s hair, for instance, has nothing to do with her ability to produce milk, and there is no reason to think that the color of a man’s hair has anything to do with his ability to produce ideas. And so it is quite possible that the master breeder, being concerned primarily with physical appearance, would find he had produced a group of blond morons—useful to him mainly as a superior type of cannon fodder.

On the whole, it seems probable that nowhere in the world in the next couple of centuries will a genuinely scientific attempt, in the sense understood by the plant or animal breeder, be made to breed for superior types of human beings. The different races and nations will continue to be conglomerates with a vast variability of mental and emotional qualities and the other abilities which make for leadership and genius.

Under what conditions will the scientist deny the truth and pervert his science to serve the slogans of tyranny? Under what conditions are great numbers of men willing to surrender all hope of individual freedom and become ciphers of the State? How can these conditions be prevented from occurring in our country?

Seeking to answer all such questions honestly, we shall inevitably come upon certain truths that are not flattering to us. We shall find in our own country some of the conditions that have made possible what we see abroad. It is not enough simply to hope that, these conditions will not reach such extremes here as they have in some other countries. We must see to it that they do not. When a political system fails to give large numbers of men the freedom it has promised, then they are willing to hand over their destiny to another political system. When the existing machinery of peace fails to give them any hope of national prosperity or national dignity, they are ready to try the hazard of war. When education fails to teach them the true nature of things, they will believe fantastic tales of devils and magic.(5) When their normal life fails to give them anything but monotony and drabness, they are easily led to express themselves in unhealthy or cruel ways, as by mob violence. And when science fails to furnish effective leadership, men will exalt demagogues, and science will have to bow down to them or keep silent.

The ironic fact is that the economic maladjustments of the present day which threaten our democracy and the freedom of science are in large part due to the changes wrought by science. In a democracy, every individual according to his station in life and according to his capacity should have opportunity for joyous service of the general welfare. Scientists, by their discoveries and inventions—which in countless ways have enriched our lives—have at the same time, without intending to do so, helped to break down this kind of democracy. Quite without intention, they have helped to replace it with an industrial system in which a small number of individuals make the decisions and the great majority have no feeling that they are taking part according to their capacity on equal terms in a common enterprise. Quite without intention they have helped to build an industrial system in which the security of an earlier day has been replaced with the hazard of unemployment. During 1931 and 1932, many scientists, accustomed to working quietly in their laboratories and with little thought for their own economic security, suddenly found their salaries cut in half or their job’s completely gone. Yes, scientists now know that in their own self-defense their methods, in the deepest and most spiritual sense, must eventually serve the general welfare in the economic and social world.

Today, on the 130th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, it is especially encouraging that science is facing the facts concerning the long-run effects of its own past achievements. It is encouraging that science at last is working actively for economic security and is coming actively to the defense of “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

 Democracy—and that term includes free science—must apply itself to meeting the material need of men for work, for income, for goods, for health, for security, and to meeting their spiritual need for dignity, for knowledge, for self-expression, for adventure and for reverence. And it must succeed.(6) The danger that it will be overthrown in favor of other system is in direct proportion to its failure to meet these needs. We may talk all we like about the beauties of democracy, the ideals of democracy, the rightness of democracy. In the long run, democracy or any other political system will be measured by its deeds, not its words.

The survival and the strength of American democracy are proof that it has succeeded by its deeds thus far. But we all know it contains the seeds of failure. I for one will not be confident of the continued survival of American democracy if millions of unskilled workers and their families are condemned to be reliefers all their lives, with no place in our industrial system. I will not be confident of the survival of democracy if economic crises every few years continue to put fear into the hearts of millions of skilled and professional workers. I will not be confident of the survival of democracy if half our people must continue to be below the line of decent nutrition, while only one-tenth succeed in reaching really good nutritional standards. I will not be confident of the survival of democracy if most of our children, which means most of our future citizens, continue to be reared in surroundings where poverty is highest and education is lowest.

These are the conditions that made possible what we are now witnessing in certain large areas of the world. They are the seeds of danger to democracy. Given a healthy, vigorous, educated people, dignified by work, sharing the resources of a rich country, and sure that their political and economic system is amply meeting their needs—given this, I think we can laugh at any threat to American democracy. But democracy must continue to deliver the goods.

Let us dedicate ourselves anew to the belief that there are extraordinary possibilities in both man and nature which have not yet been realized, and which can be made manifest only if the individualistic yet co-operative genius of democratic institutions is preserved. Let us dedicate ourselves anew to making it possible for those who are gifted in art, science and religion to approach the unknown with true reverence, and not under the compulsion of producing immediate results for the glorification of one man, one group, one race or one nation.

(1) A far more sophisticated western liberalism merely deprives men of their positions and reviles their life works. See James Watson for the latest and most egregious example, though there are many further examples.

(2) “No scientist can say today with any certainty” – they can now, and when they do they are subject to persecution (see note 1)

(3) Twin studies.

(4) Wallace was by all accounts quite an agricultural genious and made a significant fortune from corn. Here he appears to be muddying the water on genetics in a manner that anticipates Lewontin by 33 years.

(5) This same man characterizes Hitler as the devil incarnate in juxtaposition to the democratic millennial forces of the non slave world only ten years later.

(6) Wallace has gone from declaring “For science cannot flourish except in an atmosphere of freedom, and freedom cannot survive unless there is an honest facing of facts” to assuming that science must work for democracy. This implicitly assumes that democracy is factually solid and correct, and that democracy allows for free scientific investigation. This is patently false.

by Admin Posted on August 3, 2015
Posted in AntiCathedralism, Democracy, Neoreaction, New Deal | 8 Comments

Three Speeches by Henry Wallace, Part Two.

Part One

VICE-PRESIDENT HENRY C. WALLACE ADDRESS BEFORE CONGRESS OF AMERICAN SOVIET FRIENDSHIP

New York, November 8, 1942

New York Times, November 9, 1942.

We have been helping the Russians celebrate this afternoon a glorious birthday (1). The second announced by the President has come in the best possible way. Conquest of the Mediterranean will open the side door to Germany and give us the shortest possible supply route to Southern Russia. We have now reached the time when victory can be taken from us only by misunderstanding and quarreling among ourselves. This is the reason why this meeting is so important.

From north, south, east and west, Americans have come this day to pay tribute to our Russian ally. It is right that we should do so, because the Russians have thus far lost in the common cause of the United Nations at least 50 per cent more men killed, wounded and missing than all of the rest of the European allies put together. Moreover, they have killed, wounded and captured at least twenty times as many Germans as have the rest of the allies. In all of Russian history there is no more striking example of courage and willingness to sacrifice than Russia presents today.

This meeting demonstrates just one thing-the desire and the determination of the American people to help Russia, and help now. President Roosevelt has told the Army and Navy and all the other war agencies in terms which cannot possibly be misunderstood that help to Russia comes first-up to the limit of shipping possibilities. The American people are solidly behind President Roosevelt in his decision to give Russia priority number one.

It is no accident that Americans and Russians like each other when they get acquainted. Both peoples were molded by the vast sweep of a rich continent. Both peoples know that their future is greater than their past. Both hate sham. When the Russian people burst the shackles of Czarist absolutism, they turned instinctively to the United States for engineering and agricultural guidance. Thanks to the hunger of the Russian people for progress, they were able to learn in twenty-five years that which had taken us in the United States 100 years to develop.

The first person to sense the eventual significance of Russia and the United States was the French author, Tocqueville, who 107 years ago wrote:

“There are at the present time two great nations in the world which seem to tend towards the same end, although they start from different points. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. . . . Their starting point is different and their courses are not the same, yet each of them seems to be marked by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”

Russia and the United States today are far closer than Tocqueville could possibly have imagined when he traveled across the United States in 1835. The continental position of both countries and the need for developing rich resources unmolested from without have caused the peoples of both nations to have a profound hatred of war and a strong love of peace.

We in the United States honor Maxim Litvinov, when we recall how as Foreign Minister of Russia he worked for “collective security.” Litvinov, in those days when Hitler was rising to power, wanted to preserve the peace by banding together the non-aggressor nations so they could take a decisive stand against any ruthless nation that might be out for loot. He saw Russia bounded by fourteen different nations, many of which were unfriendly for definite historical reasons. He knew that Germany would use one or more of these nations against Russia when she attacked. Litvinov failed for a time, but now he has come into his own again because he was right.

Russia has had her bitter experience with isolationism. So also has the United States. In 1919 Republicans and Democrats alike sought through a League of Nations to express their belief in the collective security of that day. Taft, Hughes, Hoover, Lowden and Root all wanted a league. Then isolationism came out of its cave and not only killed any possibility of our entering the League, but made it certain that we would adopt international policies which would make World War No. 2 almost inevitable.

Both Russia and the United States retreated into isolationism to preserve their peace. Both failed. Both have learned their lesson.

Russia and the United States have had a profound effect upon each other. Both are striving for the education, the productivity and the enduring happiness of the common man. The new democracy, the democracy of the common man, includes not only the Bill of Rights, but also economic democracy, ethnic democracy, educational democracy, and democracy in the treatment of the sexes.

The ferment in the world today is such that these various types of democracy must be woven together into a harmonious whole. Millions of Americans are now coming to see that if Pan America and the British Commonwealth are the warp of the new democracy, then the peoples of Russia and Asia may well become its woof.

Some in the United States believe that we have over-emphasized what might be called political or Bill-of-Rights democracy. Carried to its extreme form, it leads to rugged individualism, exploitation, impractical emphasis on States’ rights, and even to anarchy.

Russia, perceiving some of the abuses of excessive political democracy, has placed strong emphasis on economic democracy. This, carried to an extreme, demands that all power be centered in one man and his bureaucratic helpers.(2)

Somewhere there is a practical balance between economic and political democracy. Russia and the United States both have been working toward this practical middle ground. In present-day Russia, for example, differences in wage income are almost but not quite as great as in the United States. The manager of a factory may be paid ten times as much as the average worker. Artists, scientists, and outstanding writers are usually paid even more than factory managers or political commissars.

The chief difference between the economic organization of Russia and that of the United States is that in Russia it is almost impossible to live on income-producing property. The Russian form of State socialism is designed not to get equality of income but to place a maximum incentive on each individual to produce his utmost.

A third kind of democracy, which I call ethnic, is in my opinion vital to the new democracy, the democracy of the common man. Ethnic democracy means merely that the different races and minority groups must be given equality of economic opportunity. President Roosevelt was guided by principles of ethnic democracy when in June of 1941 he issued an executive order prohibiting racial discrimination in the employing of workers by national defense industries.

Russia has probably gone farther than any other nation in the world in practicing ethnic democracy. From the Russians we can learn much, for unfortunately the Anglo-Saxons have had an attitude toward other races which has made them exceedingly unpopular in many parts of the world.

We have not sunk to the lunatic level of the Nazi myth of racial superiority, but we have sinned enough to cost us already the blood of tens of thousands of precious lives. Ethnic democracy built from the heart is perhaps the greatest need of the Anglo-Saxon tradition.

The fourth democracy, which has to do with education, is based fundamentally on belief in ethnic democracy. It is because Stalin pushed educational democracy with all the power that he could command that Russia today is able to resist Germany. The Russian people for generations have had a great hunger to learn to read and write, and when Lenin and Stalin gave them the opportunity, they changed in twenty years from a nation which was 90 per cent illiterate to a nation of which nearly 90 per cent are able to read and write.

Russia has had a great admiration for the American system of technical education and public libraries. If she can continue during the next twenty years the progress made in the past twenty, she will surpass the United States. If, in the future, Russia comes whole-heartedly into the family of nations, we may expect Russian scientists to make contributions to human welfare which equal those of any nation in the world. In any event, the Russian scientists will most assuredly be doing their best to place the results of science more definitely at the service of the average man and woman. Patents based on Russian scientific work will not be held out of use to benefit international cartels.

With regard to the fifth democracy, the treatment of the sexes, most of us in the United States have felt complacent. It has taken the war experience of Russia to demonstrate the completeness of our failure. Those who have visited Russia recently say that about 40 per cent of the work in the factories is being done by women The average woman does about as much work as the average man and is paid as much. Thousands of Russian women are in uniform either actively fighting or standing guard.(3) We in the United States have not yet, in the same way as the Russians, called on the tremendous reserve power which is in our women, but before this war is over, we may be forced to give women their opportunity to demonstrate that with proper training they are equal to man in most kinds of work.

The old democracy did not serve as a guarantee of peace. The new democracy, in which the people of the United States and Russia are so deeply interested, must give us such a guarantee. This new democracy will be neither communism of the old-fashioned internationalist type nor democracy of the old-fashioned isolationist sort. Willingness to support world organization to maintain world peace by justice implemented by force is fundamental to the democracy of the common man in these days of airplanes. Fortunately, the airplanes, which make it necessary to organize the world for peace, also furnish the means of maintaining peace. When this war comes to an end, the United Nations will have such an overwhelming superiority in air power that we shall be able speedily to enforce any mandate whenever the United Nations may have arrived at a judgment based on international law. (4)

The first article in the international law of the future is undoubtedly the United Nations’ Charter. The United Nations’ Charter includes the Atlantic Charter, and there is little reason why it should longer be called the “Atlantic Charter” in view of the fact that the broader instrument has been validated by thirty nations.

This United Nations’ Charter has in it an international bill of rights and certain economic guarantees of international peace. These must and will be made more specific. There must be an international bank and an international TVA, include say an international Dnieper-story dam for that matter, based on projects which are self-liquidating at low rates of interest.

In this connection, I would like to refer to a conversation with Molotov, when he was here last Spring. Thinking of the unemployment and misery which might so easily follow this war, I spoke of the need for productive public works programs which would stir the imagination of all the peoples of the world, and suggested as a starter a combined highway and airway from Southern South America across the United States, Canada and Alaska into Siberia and on to Europe, with feeder highways and airways from China, India and the Middle East. Molotov’s first reaction was, “No one nation can do it by itself.” Then he said, “You and I will live to see the day.”

The new democracy by definition abhors imperialism. But by definition also, it is internationally minded and supremely interested in raising the productivity, and therefore the standard of living, of all the peoples of the world. First comes transportation, and this is followed by improved agriculture, industrialization and rural electrification. The big planes and skilled pilots which will be ours when the war comes to an end will lead us into a most remarkable future as surely as day follows night. We can make it a future of new democracy based on peace. As Molotov so clearly indicated, this brave, free world of the future cannot be created by the United States and Russia alone.

Undoubtedly China will have a strong influence on the world which will come out of this war and in exerting this influence it is quite possible that the principles of Sun Yat-Sen will prove to be as significant as those of any other modern statesman. The British Commonwealth, England herself, the democracies of Northwest Europe, Latin America, and in fact all of the United Nations, have a very important role to play. But in order that the United Nations may effectively serve the world it is vital that the United States and Russia be in accord as to the fundamentals of an enduring peace based on the aspirations of the common man. I am here this afternoon to say that it is my belief that the American and Russian people can and will throw their influence on the side of building a new democracy which will be the hope of all the world.

(1) Burnham in ‘The Machiavellians’ makes the observation that the glorious birthday refers to the Bolshevik/ October revolution, and not the original February revolution that removed the Tzar.

(2) The Vice President of the USA had no issue recognising Russia as a democracy.

(3) Russia women in the military were subject to significant levels of rape and were a significant problem, as appears to be the case in modern militaries.

(4) Iraq, Kosovo, Libya etc etc

by Admin Posted on August 3, 2015
Posted in AntiCathedralism, Democracy, Neoreaction, New Deal | 2 Comments

Three Speeches by Henry Wallace, Part One.

*Notes and emboldening are my own.

Vice President Henry C. Wallace. Removed from his postion and replaced by Harry Truman. Originally a republican until 1936. His position as vice president running mate to Roosevelt was decided by Roosevelt, and not the Democratic Party. Wallace was a mere 88 days away from becoming the 33rd president of the United States.

VICE PRESIDENT HENRY G. WALLACE’S ADDRESS BEFORE THE FREE WORLD ASSOCIATION

New York City, May 8, 1942

Office of War Information, Washington, D. C.

We who in a formal or an informal way represent most of the free peoples of the world are met here tonight in the interests of the millions in all the nations who have freedom in their souls. To my mind this meeting has just one purpose-to let those millions in other countries know that here in the United States are 130 million men, women, and children who are in this war to the finish. Our American people are utterly resolved to go on until they can strike the relentless blows that will assure a complete victory, and with it win a new day for the lovers of freedom, everywhere on this earth.

This is a fight between a slave world and a free world. Just as the United States in 1862 could not remain half slave and half free, so in 1942 the world must make its decision for a complete victory one way or the other.

As we begin the final stages of this fight to the death between the free world and the slave world, it is worth while to refresh our minds about the march of freedom for the common man. The idea of freedom-the freedom that we in the United States know and love so well-is derived from the Bible with its extraordinary emphasis on the dignity of the individual. Democracy is the only true political expression of Christianity.

The prophets of the Old Testament were the first to preach social justice. But that which was sensed by the prophets many centuries before Christ was not given complete and powerful political expression until our Nation was formed as a Federal Union a century and a half ago. Even then, the march of the common people had just begun. Most of them did not yet know how to read and write. There were no public schools to which all children could go. Men and women cannot be really free until they have plenty to eat, and time and ability to read and think and talk things over. Down the years, the people of the United States have moved steadily forward in the practice of democracy. Through universal education, they now can read and write and form opinions of their own.(1) They have learned, and are still learning, the art of production-that is, how to make a living. They have learned, and are still learning, the art of self-government.

If we were to measure freedom by standards of nutrition, education, and self-government we might rank the United States and certain nations of western Europe very high. But this would not be fair to other nations where education has become widespread only in the last 20 years. In many nations, a generation ago, nine out of ten of the people could not read or write. Russia, for example, was changed from an illiterate to a literate nation within one generation and, in the process, Russia’s appreciation of freedom was enormously enhanced. In China, the increase during the past 30 years in the ability of the people to read and write has been matched by their increased interest in real liberty.

Everywhere, reading and writing are accompanied by industrial progress, and industrial progress sooner or later inevitably brings a strong labor movement. From a long-time and fundamental point of view, there are no backward peoples which are lacking in mechanical sense. Russians, Chinese, and the Indians both of India and the Americas all learn to read and write and operate machines just as well as your children and my children.(2) Everywhere the common people are on the march. Thousands of them are learning to read and write, learning to think together, learning to use tools. These people are learning to think and work together in labor movements, some of which may be extreme or impractical at first, but which eventually will settle down to serve effectively the interests of the common man.

When the freedom-loving people march-when the farmers have an opportunity to buy land at reasonable prices and to sell the produce of their land through their own organizations, when workers have the opportunity to form unions and bargain through them collectively, and when the children of all the people have an opportunity to attend schools which teach them the truths of the real world in which they live-when these opportunities are open to everyone, then the world moves straight ahead (1).

But in countries where the ability to read and write has been recently acquired or where the people have had no experience in governing themselves on the basis of their own thinking, it is easy for demagogues to arise and prostitute the mind of the common man to their own base ends (3). Such a demagogue may get financial help from some person of wealth who is unaware of what the end result will be. With this backing, the demagogue may dominate the minds of the people, and, from whatever degree of freedom they have, lead them backward into slavery. Herr Thyssen, the wealthy German steel man, little realized what he was doing when he gave Hitler enough money to enable him to play on the minds of the German people. The demagogue is the curse of the modern world, and, of all the demagogues, the worst are those financed by well-meaning wealthy men who sincerely believe that their wealth is likely to be safer if they can hire men with political “it” to change the signposts and lure the people back into slavery of the most degraded kind. Unfortunately for the wealthy men who finance movements of this sort, as well as for the people themselves, the successful demagogue is a powerful genie who, when once let out of his bottle, refuses to obey anyone’s command. As long as his spell holds, he defies God himself, and Satan is turned loose upon the world.

Through the leaders of the Nazi revolution, Satan now is trying to lead the common man of the whole world back into slavery and darkness. For the stark truth is that the violence preached by the Nazis is the devil’s own religion of darkness. So also is the doctrine that one race or one class is by heredity superior and that all other races or classes are supposed to be slaves. The belief in one Satan-inspired Fuehrer, with his Quislings, his Lavals, and his Mussolinis-his “gauleiters” in every nation in the world-is the last and ultimate darkness. Is there any hell hotter than that of being a Quisling, unless it is that of being a Laval or a Mussolini? (4)

In a twisted sense, there is something almost great in the figure of the Supreme Devil operating through a human form, in a Hitler who has the daring to spit straight into the eye of God and man. But the Nazi system has a heroic position for only one leader. By definition only one person is allowed to retain full sovereignty over his own soul. All the rest are stooges-they are stooges who have been mentally and politically degraded, and who feel that they can get square with the world only by mentally and politically degrading other people. These stooges are really psychopathic cases. Satan has turned loose upon us the insane.

The march of freedom of the past 150 years has been a long-drawn-out people’s revolution. In this Great Revolution of the people, there were the American Revolution of 1775, the French Revolution of 1792, the Latin-American revolutions of the Bolivarian era, the German Revolution of 1848 and the Russian Revolution of 1918. Each spoke for the common man in terms of blood on the battlefield. Some went to excess. But the significant thing is that the people groped their way to the light. More of them learned to think and work together.(5)

The people’s revolution aims at peace and not at violence, but if the rights of the common man are attacked, it unleashes the ferocity of a she-bear who has lost a cub. When the Nazi psychologists tell their master Hitler that we in the United States may be able to produce hundreds of thousands of planes, but that we have no will to fight, they are only fooling themselves and him. The truth is that when the rights of the American people are transgressed, as those rights have been transgressed, the American people will fight with a relentless fury which will drive the ancient Teutonic gods back cowering into their caves. The Gotterdammerung has come for Odin and his crew.

The people are on the march toward even fuller freedom than the most fortunate peoples of the earth have hitherto enjoyed. No Nazi counter-revolution will stop it. The common man will smoke the Hitler stooges out into the open in the United States, in Latin America, and in India. He will destroy their influence. No Lavals, no Mussolinis will be tolerated in a Free World.

The people, in their millennial and revolutionary march toward manifesting here on earth the dignity that is in every human soul, hold as their credo the Four Freedoms enunciated by President Roosevelt in his message to Congress on January 6, 1941.(6) These Four Freedoms are the very core of the revolution for which the United Nations have taken their stand. We who live in the United States may think there is nothing very revolutionary about freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and freedom from the fear of secret police. But when we begin to think about the significance of freedom from want for the average man, then we know that the revolution of the past 150 years has not been completed, either here in the United States or in any other nation in the world. We know that this revolution cannot stop until freedom from want has actually been attained.

And now, as we move forward toward realizing the Four Freedoms of this people’s revolution, I would like to speak about four duties. It is my belief that every freedom, every right, every privilege has its price, its corresponding duty without which it cannot be enjoyed. The four duties of the people’s revolution, as I see them today, are these:

  1. The duty to produce to the limit.
  2. The duty to transport as rapidly as possible to the field of battle.
  3. The duty to fight with all that is within us.
  4. The duty to build a peace-just, charitable, and enduring.

The fourth duty is that which inspires the other three.

We failed in our job after World War I. We did not know how to go about it to build an enduring world-wide peace. We did not have the nerve to follow through and prevent Germany from rearming. We did not insist that she “learn war no more.” We did not build a peace treaty on the fundamental doctrine of the people’s revolution. We did not strive wholeheartedly to create a world where there could be freedom from want for all the peoples. But by our very errors we learned much, and after this war we shall be in position to utilize our knowledge in building a world which is economically, politically, and, I hope, spiritually sound.

Modern science, which is a byproduct and an essential part of the people’s revolution, has made it technologically possible to see that all of the people of the world get enough to eat. Half in fun and half seriously, I said the other day to Madame Litvinov: “The object of this war is to make sure that everybody in the world has the privilege of drinking a quart of milk a day.” She replied: “Yes, even half a pint.” The peace must mean a better standard of living for the common man, not merely in the United States and England but also in India, Russia, China, and Latin America-not merely in the United Nations but also in Germany and Italy and Japan.

Some have spoken of the “American Century.” I say that the century on which we are entering-the century which will come out of this war-can be and must be the century of the common man. Perhaps it will be America’s opportunity to suggest the freedoms and duties by which the common man must live. Everywhere the common man must learn to build his own industries with his own hands in a practical fashion. Everywhere the common man must learn to increase his productivity so that he and his children can eventually pay to the world community all that they have received. No nation will have the God-given right to exploit other nations. Older nations will have the privilege to help younger nations get started on the path to industrialization, but there must be neither military nor economic imperialism. The methods of the nineteenth century will not work in the people’s century which is now about to begin. India, China, and Latin America have a tremendous stake in the people’s century. As their masses learn to read and write, and as they become productive mechanics, their standard of living will double and treble. Modern science, when devoted wholeheartedly to the general welfare, has in it potentialities of which we do not yet dream.

And modern science must be released from German slavery. International cartels that serve American greed and the German will to power must go. Cartels in the peace to come must be subjected to international control for the common man, as well as being under adequate control by the respective home governments. In this way, we can prevent the Germans from again building a war machine while we sleep. With international monopoly pools under control, it will be possible for inventions to serve all the people instead of only the few.

Yes, and when the time of peace comes, the citizen will again have a duty, the supreme duty of sacrificing the lesser interests for the greater interest of the general welfare. Those who write the peace must think of the whole world. There can be no privileged peoples. We ourselves in the United States are no more a master race than the Nazis. And we cannot perpetuate economic warfare without planting the seeds of military warfare. We must use our power at the peace table to build an economic peace that is just, charitable, and enduring.

If we really believe that we are fighting for a people’s peace, all the rest becomes easy. Production, yes-it will be easy to get production without either strikes or sabotage; production with the wholehearted cooperation between willing arms and keen brains; enthusiasm, zip, energy geared to the tempo of keeping at it everlastingly day after day. Hitler knows as well as those of us who sit in on the War Production Board meetings that we here in the United States are winning the battle of production. He knows that both labor and business in the United States are doing a most remarkable job and that his only hope is to crash through to a complete victory some time during the next six months.

And then there is the task of transportation to the line of battle by truck, by railroad car, by ship. We shall joyously deny ourselves so that our transportation system is improved by at least 30 percent.

I need say little about the duty to fight. Some people declare, and Hitler believes, that the American people have grown soft in the last generation. Hitler agents continually preach in South America that we are cowards, unable to use, like the “brave” German soldiers, the weapons of modern war. It is true that American youth hates war with a holy hatred. But because of that fact and because Hitler and the German people stand as the very symbol of war, we shall fight with a tireless enthusiasm until war and the possibility of war have been removed from this planet. We shall cleanse the plague spot of Europe, which is Hitler’s Germany, and with it the hell-hole of Asia-Japan.

The American people have always had guts and always will have. You know the story of Bomber Pilot Dixon and Radioman Gene Aldrich and Ordnanceman Tony Pastula-the story which Americans will be telling their children for generations to illustrate man’s ability to master any fate. These men lived for 34 days on the open sea in a rubber life raft, 8 feet by 4 feet, with no food but that which they took from the sea and the air with one pocket knife and a pistol. And yet they lived it through and came at last to the beach of an island they did not know. In spite of their suffering and weakness, they stood like men, with no weapon left to protect themselves, and no shoes on their feet or clothes on their backs, and walked in military file because, they said, “If there were Japs, we didn’t want to be crawling.”

The American fighting men, and all the fighting men of the United Nations, will need to summon all their courage during the next few months. I am convinced that the summer and fall of 1942 will be a time of supreme crisis for us all. Hitler, like the prize fighter who realizes he is on the verge of being knocked out, is gathering all his remaining forces for one last desperate blow. There is abject fear in the heart of the madman and a growing discontent among his people as he prepares for his last all-out offensive.

We may be sure that Hitler and Japan will cooperate to do the unexpected-perhaps an attack by Japan against Alaska and our northwest coast at a time when German transport planes will be shuttled across from Dakar to furnish leadership and stiffening to a German uprising in Latin America. In any event, the psychological and sabotage offensive in the United States and Latin America will be timed to coincide with, or anticipate by a few weeks, the height of the military offensive.

We must be especially prepared to stifle the fifth columnists in the United States who will try to sabotage not merely our war material plants but, even more important, our minds. We must be prepared for the worst kind of fifth-column work in Latin America, much of it operating through the agency of governments with which the United States at present is at peace. When I say this, I recognize that the peoples, both of Latin America and of the nations supporting the agencies through which the fifth columnists work, are overwhelmingly on the side of the democracies. We must expect the offensive against us on the military, propaganda, and sabotage fronts, both in the United States and in Latin America, to reach its apex some time during the next few months. The conclusive efforts of the dying madman will be so great that some of us may be deceived into thinking that the situation is bad at a time when it is really getting better. But in the case of most of us, the events of the next few months, disturbing though they may be, will only increase our will to bring about complete victory in this war of liberation. Prepared in spirit, we cannot be surprised. Psychological terrorism will fall flat. As we nerve ourselves for the supreme effort in this hemisphere we must not forget the sublime heroism of the oppressed in Europe and Asia, whether it be in the mountains of Yugoslavia, the factories of Czechoslovakia and France, the farms of Poland, Denmark, Holland, and Belgium, among the seamen of Norway, or in the occupied areas of China and the Dutch East Indies. Everywhere the soul of man is letting the tyrant know that slavery of the body does not end resistance.

There can be no half measures. North, South, East, West, and Middle West-the will of the American people is for complete victory.

No compromise with Satan is possible. We shall not rest until all the victims under the Nazi yoke are freed. We shall fight for a complete peace as well as a complete victory.

The people’s revolution is on the march, and the devil and all his angels cannot prevail against it. They cannot prevail, for on the side of the people is the Lord.

“He giveth power to the faint; to them that have no might He increaseth strength…. They that wait upon the Lord shall . . . mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”

Strong in the strength of the Lord, we who fight in the people’s cause will never stop until that cause is won.

 (1) By “opinions of there own” what is actually meant is opinions formed and fed by the academic arm of the Cathedral which correspond to accepted wisdom regardless of scientific veracity. This now ranges false information in the form of scientifically disproven concepts of genetic non-differentiation between races, to concepts such as white privilege which defy any scientific basis.

(2) Variation in cognitive abilities by race has been demonstrated repeatedly and irrefutably.

(3) The ability of the average person to think and make decisions for themselves is a grotesque fallacy perpetuated by some of the greatest minds in history. Practice has shown repeatedly that average people defer to social authority by default. This is a constant and cannot be altered, for if it could, it would have by now. To criticise demagogue for utilising the manipulability of the masses is rank idiocy. Of course, this demonstrates the relative advantage that a Cathedral type structure with non-acknowledged elites has in relation to a simple napoleon style democractic dictatorship – harder to comprehend and critique.

(4) The religious impulses underlying the progressives liberal democractic zeal are most aptly demonstrated by their own words.

(5) You often find identified communists listing the social revolutions in glowing terms. That you have a progressive Vice President of the United States doing so in identical terms is damning. Where does the differentiation between communism and Americanism come into play?

(6) Pellicani in ‘Revolutionary apocalypse’ does a wonderful job of explaining how communism was and is a Chistian/ Jewish millennial cult. The Vice President here is simply correcting this to include liberal progressivism which is barely distinguishable.

by Admin Posted on August 3, 2015
Posted in AntiCathedralism, Democracy, Liberal progressivism, Neoreaction, New Deal | 6 Comments

High-Middle-Low, Right-Left.

Applying the analysis of De Jouvenel to the question of political right, and political left supplies us with a highly complex and sophisticated understanding of what constitutes these two seemingly unexplainable categories. Political left is a composition of low and high, or rather of Centralising Power and political masses with either no significant political property or rights, or significantly less political rights or property than the middle. The middle being the part of society which has capital, political rights or political property.

The left is therefore definable as a quest for equality which translates as a breaking down of centres of power with rights, political property and capital to increase the right, political property and capital of the low, which dovetails with the highs desire/ impetus to increase its position vis a vis the middle. The mechanism becomes baked in with the overthrow of monarchs and the installation of the people as the sovereign, distilled in the form of a committee or dictator who acts as the people and as such has the ability and freedom to conduct whatever action they wish.

In contrast to this, the right is the middle, and the middle’s flourishing. It is capitalist accumulation forming business power centres, it was the feudal system which function in a similar manner, it is free association and free organisation which creates natural hierarchies.

In this light, the rise and establishment of National Socialism in Germany present an interesting anomaly in that a high-low mechanism was formulated which connected a high (the Nazis party) with the low of the petit-bourgeois. A strange break and reversal of the mechanism of the high migrating to a super-national locus. Elsewhere, the iron grip of the low in the form of the proletariat and the high as nation states moving onto international organisations was in full swing. Hence we see the conflict between national socialism and international Marxism/ liberal democracy.

Of course, Nazism being the great evil that it was by rejecting the internationalism of democracy, was obliterated by a good revolution of the “people” or the “common man” led or to be led by the United Nations according to Vice President Henry Wallace. This high aggressively outlined how they transfer to an even higher position and dismantle all centres of power beneath them, this time not only civil society, but the locus of national sovereignty itself. As a result, we see the the United nation Declaration bursting right out of the gates with

Article 1.

  • All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

 

A reader of this blog would not need to be convinced of the fundamental idiocy of the UDHR, nor dignify it with further consideration as anything but a manifestation of De Jouvenelian high-low power mechanism which justifies the destruction of any and all non-Central Power centres. The Justification provided for the fighting of the war can be seen in the Allied Power’s Four Freedoms as their official war aim.

That LGBT advocating and other minority protection in the form of R2P should be pushed as justification to effect regime change and intervention in other nations sovereignty is of no real surprise once this is taken into account. It represents yet another example of the high of the international community invoking the low of whichever group as the justification for destroying whatever power centre is a problem. Disillusioned freaks and perverts thus obtain power by virtue of being middle breaking legitimisers. The UDHR is a hideous document, penned by faceless bureaucrats and propagated by a revolutionary organisation which is busy trying force Africans on nation states to break up national integrity. For the “peoples” benefit of course.

Leaving the hideous organisation aside for now, we need to get back to the question of what is right wing, and as I have said, right wing is protection of the middle. I will keep banging the drum, but I maintain that nRX is made up of both middle weaponisers, and High capturers. Both positions being characterised by Szabo and Moldbug respectively. Both overlapping in the desperate fight to preserve what is in effect civilisation in the form of free organisation and non-atomisation occasioned by the high low mechanism of unsecure power which has no feedback between the high and the consequences of their actions.

by Admin Posted on August 2, 2015
Posted in De Jouvenel, Neoreaction, Western Society's stroke | 7 Comments

Nrx Schism

A major schism exists at the heart of NRx theory over the question of the pattern of society in relation to the Central Power of the state. Moldbug is the originator of the novel idea of importing the concept of an absolutist emperor rule power pattern as a means to obtain Wu Wei. Others (most notably Jim and Land) promote either a balance of power system in which the state is thoroughly defanged, or a more extreme individual sovereignty enabled by technological developments such as the block chain and AI governance. A good example of this divide can be seen in the discussion between Moldbug and Szabo in the comments on this post.

I will stake my position out early, and say I side with Moldbug on this issue until I am persuaded otherwise, and I will try and briefly outline my reasons why.

Beginning with the idea of defanging the state and super empowering the individual via non-state entities, I have no argument that such things will happen, and that the state in its current guise will retreat in the face of such technological achievements. However, to assume that this process will continue in a unidirectional manner and the state will merely disappear is wrong. The state will either become stronger and more crazy to counteract the centrifugal forces of non-state association or will fail and then be replaced by another form of centralised power which will arise as naturally as the growth of a plant.

An excellent example of the manner in which the state responds to non-state association is supplied by the creation and spread of the internet. This anarchist dream allowed for mass communication and organisation within a domain in which no state actor could control or monitor. Many claims of the dawning of a new world were made. Now the state has merely recorded everything on the internet. There is a strong lesson here for those who will pay attention.

This is not to say that it is inconceivable that the state could be neutered, Medieval England provides an excellent example of this process as explained in exhaustive detail by Szabo. Many sub- state entities existed and political property was very much localised and franchised, but this was so in an era in which the ability of the central power to counter such developments was limited. History since has been one of an increasing technological ability of the Central Power to skip intermediaries and go straight to the populace.

In addition, even if technological innovations help destroy one Central Power with a specific name they tend to give rise to new Central Power,  which following the destruction wrought by the process have access to an entire political arena in which no natural barrier are available to halt their pulsation of power growth, and who then use the very same technology to their own advantage. A great example is the usage of the printing press by Whigs to assist in destroying absolutist monarchy only for it to become a tool of vast assistance to Central Power in the form of the non-monarchical nation state. Central Power has a tendency to ultimately win.

Not only does central Power have a tendency to win, but given the nature of power, it has a tendency to do so by utilizing equality policies and scapegoating of non-state locus of power and wealth to do so. I have noted how De Juvenel has commented extensively on the utilisation of the low by Central Power, and the destruction of non-state association, so I will quote Burnham from ‘The Machiavellians’ this time for some variety

“The fuedal lords did not want nation states, which in the end were sure to bring destruction of the power…But the monarchy also- the king and those immediately associated with the King- was ready for the nation, through which the full political sovereignty of the monarch could be brought to bear on against the centrifugal pull of fuedalism. Therefore a de facto alliance was made, and around the monarchy the nation was pulled together. It was Machiavelli’s own contemporary, Sir Thomas More, most successful lawyer in London, for the London merchants, who was first commoner to become Chancellor of England. A younger contemporary and fellow-Florentine   Catherine of the same Medici family to one whose members ‘The Prince’ is dedicated , daughter of a banker, became Queen p37

This impulse for dissolving sub state bonds of association is strong with advocates of Central Power as further noted by Jim’s quote of Hobbes

“Another infirmity of a Commonwealth is the immoderate greatness of a town, when it is able to furnish out of its own circuit the number and expense of a great army; as also the great number of corporations, which are as it were many lesser Commonwealths in the bowels of a greater, like worms in the entrails of a natural man. To may be added, liberty of disputing against absolute power by pretenders to political prudence; which though bred for the most part in the lees of the people, yet animated by false doctrines are perpetually meddling with the fundamental laws, to the molestation of the Commonwealth, like the little worms which physicians call ascarides.” Chapter 29 Leviathan

Note that Moldbug’s idea departs aggressively from Hobbes in that his absolute ruler does not fear sub-state power structures, and is in fact aggressively supportive of them.

Here are some random facts about the present California which, I feel, are violations of order. The major cities are full of racist paramilitary gangs. Large sections of them are unsafe at night. Other sections are unsafe by day. Millions of people are in California illegally. California has no secure list of the people who are authorized to reside there, nor does it know the addresses and occupations of its residents, nor does it have their biometric identities. If an unlocked bicycle is left on the street, it will be stolen. Many Californians are idle and not independently wealthy. Many schools approach the zoological. Graffiti is everywhere, as is garbage. Etc, etc. (You’ll note that by the global standards of 2009, California is actually quite orderly.)

To the residents of the New California, after a few years of the Dictatorship, any of these phenomena would be as shocking as the sight of a live rhinoceros walking down the street. More to the point, they would be about as shocking as the exact same phenomena would to the residents of California in 1909. The Dictator’s theory is that all recent earthquakes in California are caused by these individuals spinning in their graves. Her regime should thus end this menace as well.

(Libertarians: note that at present, your risk of having your human rights violated by a private actor is much greater than your risk of having your human rights violated by a state actor. Which hurts more? A cop hitting you over the head with a club, or a mugger hitting you over the head with a club? In my mind, they hurt about the same. Thus, as a libertarian, my most serious complaint against the State is not any alleged abuses of the security forces, but its tolerance of widespread anarchy and disorder – by several orders of magnitude.)

Once order is achieved, the next step is law. Obviously, the old laws of California were entirely abrogated by the establishment of the Dictatorship, with which they are quite inconsistent. In establishing order, the Dictator does not need law. She has direct command of the security forces. Again, there is no law without order – our second rule of hierarchy.

With order, law can be restored. But few lawyers, and no non-lawyers, can be found who believe that the present legal system of California is fair, efficient, and just. Therefore, one of the Dictator’s first priorities is to recodify the law – taking another tip from Frederick the Great. In fact, Frederick’s code (or a later successor) might be an excellent starting point. You are rebooting, after all.

A sovereign operating under the rule of law is not, contrary to several centuries of Whig horsepucky, a sovereign bound by the rule of law. It is a sovereign which chooses to abide by the rule of law. It declares a consistent and stable set of rules by which everyone in New California, Dictator included, can live and work and play nice with each other.

Ideally, because New California is in a state of order, the Dictator does not need to deploy her prerogative, which is her sovereign right to violate her own law. By maintaining this blissful state, the Dictator does not abandon the prerogative and allow it to decay (as Charles I did), but reaffirms and justifies it. If order threatens to lapse, the LAPD is still on line 1.

Finally, from law we reach the ultimate state: freedom. As libertarians know, freedom is the state of minimal government. Once the Dictator has turned California into Prussia, she feels free to relax and let everyone chill out a little. New California is a money-making proposition, but it is also California. It doesn’t pay to be too uptight.

Obviously, without law there can be no freedom – our third rule of hierarchy. One can live a perfectly normal life in a pure police state under martial law, but it is always ever so slightly stressful.

A Dictator attentive to the goal of freedom will be constantly pruning the edges of the law, trimming it back, reducing it, creating more space for personal self-actualization, giving residents more and more privacy guarantees. Without, of course, jeopardizing her achievement in creating law and order in the first place.

Freedom, like anything else in government, is an art. Californians today simply have no idea of all the ways in which their life is made duller, more rigid, and more monotonous by unnecessary rules. For example, the rules by which businesses are forced to play, of which their customers know nothing, limit the types of business that exist. Over constrained building codes ensure dull, monotonous and expensive buildings. Etc, etc, etc.

But freedom is not a function of “rights.” (It is certainly not a function of your political power.) It is a function of your actual personal independence. Similarly, privacy (which is a form of freedom) is a function of your actual personal security. If the Dictator will not tell you what to do, if she will not snoop into your desk drawer or your car or your computer, in what sense is it an injury to you that she could tell you what to do, she could snoop? Isn’t your skin a little thin?

Thus we see the paradox of the Dictatorship: freedom achieved through authority. This is a paradox quite alien to Anglo-American political thought, but well-known in the East. “Confucius compares a virtuous prince to the North Pole in which he finds himself: he does not move, and everything turns around him.” Our Dictator is of course that virtuous prince – or princess.

This simple principle of wu wei is the instinctive spirit behind libertarianism. Once we understand it as the pinnacle of the sovereign’s pyramid of needs, we can see the easy but fatal mistake the libertarian makes.

Quite simply, (policy) libertarians mistake disorder for freedom. They believe it is possible to make government smaller, and achieve wu wei, by weakening and dividing sovereign authority.

While this is in some senses true – disorder can certainly be quite a liberating experience – it never lasts. In the short term there can be such a thing as benign anarchy, but in the long term never. And since power is easy to divide, but hard to unify, the long-term result is always more duplication, less unity of authority and responsibility, and a bigger, nastier government. Thus the attempt to quash themonstrous Megatherions is the exact food on which they thrive.” “secession liberty and dictatorship”

The original reactionaries were those who sought to maintain non state organisation, and modern rightist comprise of mainly advocates of non-state relationships. From the marriage advocacy and pro-business tendency of older conservatism, to the pro-liberty/ anti-statist libertarians, this seems to me to be the connecting thread. The right has been a repository of all anti-state ideological impulses in line with this, but NRx furnishes a new idea – you cannot neglect the Central Power, or assume it can be put in it’s cage if you want a society with free association.

It is over the question of how to manage Central Power that Moldbug proposes the absolute ruler who is secure in his power. A guardian of society who secures the the right of association by virtue of being incentivized to do so, and in so doing so, does not cede the process of Centralised Power formation to its repeated natural process of capture by the equality promoting progressives.

by Admin Posted on July 12, 2015
Posted in AntiCathedralism, Complex Adaptive Systems, Neoreaction, Sovereignty | 6 Comments

Public Choice+

Because homosexuality was decided to be holy in academic circles, it has subsequently broken out into the civil service as holy and has been ingrained in the entire Cathedral edifice as such. This process was not simple, nor was it immediate, but on a timescale for Cathedral selected thought systems, it was pretty swift. By my reckoning, this particular ideological system managed to form, get into gear and then break out with three decades.  Of course if you count the act of legalizing homosexuality, then it has been in gestation for some time, but as a coherent system of holiness expansion I can’t help but place it within the new left of the 60’s.

Feminism however, has been a more slow developing system which seems to have spent a while really getting into gear, but has burrowed even deeper then homosexuality promotion. Entire women studies departments have been in existence for some time, and funding for it has been extensive. Maybe its delay was merely a matter of waiting for the effects of effective contraception.

These thought systems as per De Jouvenel are naturally favored by insecure power systems. In addition to the automatic and natural manner in which any central Power would favor any system of ideas which undermined its near competitors, there is also the very powerful process of patronage and corruption. A simple rule which can explain the Cathedral is that any action or belief which increases the Cathedral is likely going to be successful, and anything which does not is going to face insurmountable hurdles and will thus be unsuccessful. This observations is nothing really new, Public choice theorists such as Niskanen have noted parts of it long ago in such things as the Budget-maximizing model.

The budget maximization model however does have problems. Does the bureaucrat really act out of personal financial utility gain? Why limit their motives to this single one when all evidence indicates that humans do not work this way. No, the truth is far more subtle. First which bureaucrat? Which department? Is there really an innocent and dumb sponsor, and how irrelevant is the rest of society to this mechanism? Who exactly are we talking about and do we include non bureaucracy entities to make sense of the world? The Cathedral model would say yes.

Do some parts of the bureaucracy seek to maximize their budgets? Of course. There are always the cynical and manipulative actors, but to stop with these is to miss the even bigger fish. A civil servent lobbying for a couple of extra million for some more staff is nothing compared to the ideologues and holymen/women/xhe’s that manage to get entire new holy projects off the ground. The resources to be gained from these entirely new patronage systems are eye watering.  Did anyone do a cost analysis of the benefits of gender mainstreaming? What is the upside of having entire women’s studies departments created in pretty much every university in the western world? What we have in reality is a mixture of forces –

  • Budget maximization by actors within not only the bureaucracy, but also quangos, NGOs and any other non-formal part of government (I’m looking at education here.) They always grow in the aggregate.
  • Central Power being in effect a jealous and constantly paranoid position at risk of competition from lesser powers which creates a fitness landscape favorable to any thought systems and forces in the world which undermine non state power centers.
  • Alienated elites becoming dissatisfied with the progress of social change and their disconnect from what they perceive as their natural role. These sub elites then push the forces which are favored by the landscape of insecure power.
  • Masses who are easy to appeal to on the basis of freeing them from the perceived oppression of their day to day hierarchies (feudal system, business, work in general.) in a manner identical to Monarchs capturing the masses by granting them their freedom to be their subjects.

 

The end result of all of the above is a constant grinding growth of the Cathedral. A swirling mass of cynical bureaucrats, scared elites desperately out holying each other, cliques operating on a Dunbar style monkey basis, lesser elites setting off holy spirals which become social revolutions; all engaging in the rapture of a state cum God freeing them from all oppression. In sum you have multiple forces all acting to increase the state via economic  incentive, status incentive, religious impulses and power dynamics.

by Admin Posted on July 12, 2015
Posted in AntiCathedralism, Complex Adaptive Systems, Democracy, Neoreaction, Western Society's stroke | 5 Comments

Katechon and Gnosticism as a Civilizational Battle

Eric Schmitt had no compunction with quite clearly referring to theology as being integral to political questions. Among the areas in which Schmitt made it clear theology had left its footprint was on the legal interpretation of the state which is very much one unchanged from medieval interpretations of the omnipotent God as well as the katechon, which,

“As Schmitt outlines in Politische Theologie , only a politics conscious of its limits, origins and ultimate fate can properly secure and defend itself, and such a consciousness can only be provided by theological concepts such as the katechon “

Of greater importance for this post is the presence of theological concepts in the theodicy of Hegel, Marx and the left (part of the left) as well as the advocates of Fukyama’s end of history thesis. At times, even the sections of the left let their guard down and are explicit in the theological water in which politics swims, as can be seen in this fascinating series of articles in the Guardian. The killer section in a consistently insightful series being the following

“For this reason his historical materialism called upon the services of theology, which, however, had to be kept well-hidden from public view even though it was often pulling the strings. To those who criticise communism and Marxism as “merely” a new form of religious belief, Benjamin’s position – as with Ernst Bloch, whom I shall look at next week – was that religion was actually a vessel that contained within its authoritarian history and structures the spark of liberation which could only be fully realised through historical materialist transformation. In that sense religion is “merely” an old form of a future and as yet unrealisable dream.”

The extraordinary depths of the communist theological structure are explored in great depth by Pellicani in his revolutionary apocalypse, a work which I plan to return to often in the future. Of key importance is the connection that Pellicani makes between the Marxist developments and Gnosticism which is echoed in the work of Vogelin. Gnosticism as a concept is something which arouses some controversy, but this appears to be a result of the deep and dark connections between early Christianity and various movements which are now deemed Gnostic. This BBC programme explains some of the tensions around the issue in an entertaining, if degenerate way (much lamenting of the patriarchy.)

If Pelicani is to be taken seriously, which he really should, then Gnosticism is a reoccurring phenomena which is linked to sub-elite alienation resulting from societal problems reducing their ability to act in accordance with their perceived roles as moral guardians. This could be in the form of extreme economic problems, or even as appears to be the case now – elite over production. This has echoes of both Turchin and Schumpeter, but as the issue of Gnosticism is such a hot topic, it might be helpful to dispense with it at present and create a meta category which is able to capture modern Gnostic type systems and older Gnostic systems without dropping into a no true Scotsman argument (“Can’t be Gnostic because there is no clear demiurge” etc.)

To this end I propose Phronima in homage to Kurt Rudolph’s observation that

“A further peculiarity of the gnostic tradition…lies in the fact that it frequently draws its material from the most varied exiting traditions, attaches itself to it, and at the same time sets it in a new frame by which the material takes on a new character and a completely new significiance….Since this view of the world attaches itself in the main to the older religious imagery, almost as a parasite prospers on the soul of “host religion,” it can be also described as parasitic. To this extent Gnosticism strictly speaking has no tradition of its own but only a borrowed one.  Its mythology is a tradition consciously created from alien material, which it has appropriated to match its own basic conception.” 1

Phronima are therefore Gnostic style systems which function as parasites on productive and effective civilisation metaphysical structures. Progressivism proper is a phronima. To this effect Jims observation that –

“Progressivism wears the religions it has devoured like a monster that dresses itself in the skins of people it has eaten.”

Is apt, very apt. Genius in fact.

Other phronima include post-modernism, feminism, multiculturalism and all of the other sects which make up the progressivism super structure. All of these phronima are independent and separate entities united in their parasitic format directed at the central structure of society. Western society is producing them at a  prodigious rate. To understand why we have to defer to Szabo, MM and De Jouvenal.

For any insecure power, a key necessity is to not only undermine enemy Powers in foreign affairs, but also in domestic affairs. In this light such things as CIA and government funding  and involvement in such bizarre things as feminism make perfect sense. In this light the list of signatories to the UAF make perfect sense, and in this light the effortless success of the likes of Anita Sarkeesian, anti-colonialists, race hustlers, multiculturalists and black rioters makes perfect sense. Once one step is taken by power to include the low into government then an instant incentive is created to exacerbate the situation, and the block and barrier against it are weak. The ratchet is entered and Phronima proliferate. This can either being chronic as in the western world at present, or it can be acute in the French revolution and the Bolshevik revolution.

These phronima all contain the same essence. There is always a mystical demiurge type existence which is spreading evil in the world (racism, patriarchy, misogony, hate) and holding secret knowledge is key. These systems have a utopian end goal which is deferred to at all points and requires the liquidation of the existing to reach. This liquidation needs the non-corrupt state which is not beholden to materialistic desires, and is manned by an enlightened elite to enact the changes. Power is thus fed amply with the destruction of those base elements which impede the coming light, and impede its access to the individualised population and levelled peoples it now rules over. That this is ultimately the cause of chaos and collapse is neither here nor there. Insecure power has no eye on the future, only on the immediate desperate struggle against near threats. Phronima and power act in tandem, one encourage by the other which then encourage further Phronimas as part of the orgy of destruction that flowers in repetition as civilizations suicide themselves as noted by Arnold Toynbee. Progress and equality does indeed become an ironic harbinger of total collapse as noted by Land, a sick joke , a royalist created act of insanity slitting it’s own throat to spite its enemies, never learning, always repeating.

Where is our katechon?

 

1 Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism, Kurt Rudolph

by Admin Posted on May 31, 2015
Posted in Katechon, Sovereignty, Theodicy | 6 Comments

Theodicy, Negative Dialectics and Post Modernism

The super structure upon which progressive thought resides is the Hegelian theodicy which is heavily derived from Christian theology. Within this theodicy, evil and the negative are overcome by the good and positive in a continuous process of thesis, antithesis and then synthesis until reconciliation of the universe is competed.

Hegel’s system itself was not meant to be used as a secular system, and was an attempt to develop a defence of God in the face of reason and rationality. Other thinkers such as Kant rejected the need for a theodicy on grounds (as far as I can tell) of the incorrectness of putting the concept of God before the trial of reason, which is in line with his apopthatic tendency.

Marx, seeing the inherent potential of Hegel’s system retro fitted it to a sociological model of class struggle and in so doing weaponised Hegel’s theodicy in the cause of “the oppressed” and “alienated.” Since this conception of Hegel’s was formed, no other new model of theodicy has been in competition, and in fact, it only appears that systems such as Karma have any strong defence against such a theodicy at present.

In the west, the attempted response against Hegel’s theodicy appear to amount to either a referral back to the bible as a explanation, attempts at claiming a theodicy does not matter, and creating an anti-theodicy.

At this point it is probably worthwhile to state that I have very little time for any differentiation between theodicy, cosmodicy and anthropodicy. As far as I am concerned they are all interchangeable for the same thing- why does evil exist? Any differentiation is the same as that between a religion and an ideology so I will stick with theodicy for the remainder of the post.

If we get back on the trail of the theodicy as put forward by Hegel, we can see that at all points the past and the present are being subsumed by a future in which things become better, and evil, badness and ignorance are reduced. This system is very much pantheistic in that God, or the Other, ceases to be transcendental and becomes of this world. Having breached this point, eschatological drives towards apocalypse are very much on the table. The world, the universe and the cosmos are Becoming, so those who can see this have a categorical imperative to bring forth this cataclysm and rid the world of the evil in it by immanentizing the eschaton in the name of progress.

Even when progress is not being pushed along by specific extreme parts of the whole, the general trend holds and destruction of the current in the name of the future is rewarded and encouraged.

The most bizarre and egregrious attempt at Hegel have come from post modern thinkers, especially Adorno with his negative dialectics. Adorno’s critique of Hegel’s theodicy can really be boiled down to complaining that the anti-thesis’s feelings are not taking into account and that if we are progressing towards a better world, then how come Auswitch-  Is that an example of anthesis being overcome? Is this absolute integration? This is a pretty squalid usage of philosophy for blatant specific aims, I mean – why Auswich? Why not the Lisbon earthquake as per Voltaie? Why not World War 2 in entirety? Why specifically the holocaust as the exemplar of evil in the world? Why a specific Jewish event? Not very subtle.

Of course, it is not only Adorno that has started to cannibalise the theodicy of Hegel, but also the entirety of the post modern discourse which only really makes sense in this context. Progress in the form of dialectics is rejected, and a new mechanism is used in which synthesis is rejected (as per negative dialectics) and “difference” is maintained. This is not really a coherent explanation for evil in the world, and is in reality a poorly constructed excuse to claim there is no evil, and that freedom should prevail everywhere. That such intellectually perverse concepts as islamaphobia, multiculturalism, feminism and all the other waves of nonsense that have poured from post modern thinkers is no real surprise in this regard.

That such thinkers and strains of thought are under the umbrella of left wing thought with standard “progress” thinkers is testament to the only conceptual link that really matters for being included in the left – destruction in the name of blind liberation. Of course, that this has all succeeded is not really explained by any of this. To explain how such clearly insane nonsense as multiculturalism could not only gain a foothold, but become wildly powerful you need to look at how power works, and this requires returning back to De Juvenal.

by Admin Posted on May 31, 2015
Posted in Liberal progressivism, Theodicy, Western Society's stroke | 2 Comments